With increased public awareness of the utility of dental floss and maintaining one's native teeth for one's entire life, dozens of different floss holding devices have been developed. Generally speaking, the earlier flossing devices comprised some kind of a central handle that doubled as a container for a roll of floss, with some floss extenders protruding from one end. Typically, some method was provided for stringing the floss out from the central spool in the handle, across the extenders, and back to some tie-down on the handle.
This type of floss holder is somewhat complicated compared to more recently designed units. Although the older style has been successfully marketed, albeit to a somewhat limited market, for years, current interest in floss holding devices has switched to a much simpler device which is not only considerably cheaper to produce, being producible for pennies a unit even in relatively small quantities, but is also much handier and much more likely to be carried around by the purchaser, and thus much more effective in the long run in insuring that proper care is taken of the teeth.
In addition to being much smaller, cheaper, and compact, there is a tendency for more recently designed floss holder to be disposable. Typically, this is achieved by simply molding one or more floss segments directly into the tips of an injected plastic body.